A Time to be Born
‘Between the impossibly spread legs of the dreamy woman crowds a turbulent pile of babies. Wavy drifts of pencil-lines display hair that spreads to mantle the whole body so that the figure seems a cosmos herself, Gaia perhaps’

We’re Rising
from the Sea

We’re rising from the sea.
We are not drowned
but quietly breathing
as we walk on the sea floor
and we’re looking inward now
to find out what we are.

We’re rising from the sea.
I haven’'t shown my face
nor used my true name.
I have one – sacred
difficult to speak
difficult to hold.
It changes every moment.
It's your name also.

Rising from the sea

 
 
‘I felt I’d become part of the tribe of women after my baby was born, joined to an ancient timeless line of procreation. I felt so powerful.’

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Poems Copyright © Jeni Couzyn, 1983, 1985, 1999.
Drawings Copyright © Claire Weissman Wilks 1975, 1983, 1999. All rights reserved.
Legal notice: No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise without written permission from the copyright owners and the publisher. Jeni Couzyn and Claire Weissman Wilks have asserted their rights under section 77 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work.